The present invention relates to the principle of a multi-chamber rotary piston internal combustion engine.
In contrast to the multi-chamber rotary piston internal combustion engine according to the invention, most internal combustion engines today function as piston engines between fixed volume limits, which do not allow the working gas in the cylinder to relax to ambient pressure during the expansion stroke.
The kinetic and heat energy still contained in the exhaust gases is being utilized, in the meantime, by ever more developed techniques to improve the energy balance of such internal combustion engines. For example, exhaust gas turbocharging technology has gained great importance.
Furthermore, improvements are achieved by more precise metering of fuel supply by means of injection pumps, as well as improvement of the air conditions by means of air compression technology. Increasing the number of intake and outlet valves for gas exchange also contributes to increasing the degree of effectiveness of these engines.
However, the structure of today's piston engines will always set limits for optimization of the energy balance. The unutilized release of a high percentage of the energy contained in the fuel to the environment cannot be avoided with this technology.
Until now, the development of rotary piston engines has also not resulted in solutions which yielded convincing advantages as compared with the former concepts and were able to succeed on the market.
The best-known result of this development is the Wankel engine. However, it also does not offer any decisive improvement with regard to energy yield and environmental impact. Its current market importance can practically be ignored.
The idea of a multi-chamber engine in which all the motor functions take place simultaneously, next to one another, is also pursued with different technical solutions by the patent applications and/or patent Nos.: DE 2,828,000 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,170,978, as well as FR 2,105,695; JP 57,203,802 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,658,779. In this connection, reference must also be made to the following patent documents: U.S. Pat. No. 788,179 U.S. Pat. No. 3,073,188 U.S. Pat. No. 3,883,277 as well as U.S. Pat. No. 1,464,382 and DE 914, 686. However, the motor concepts among these documents exclusively involve piston and cylinder units which run internally, which differ in practically all essential parts from the technical solutions of the multi-chamber rotary piston internal combustion engine presented here. Obviously, it was not possible to achieve market success with their technical suggestions until now, either.
The multi-chamber motor with two specific functional units presented with the present application is new: Cylinder and piston combinations which run on the inside for the functions of intake, and compression, on the one hand, correspond with cylinder and piston units which run on the outside for the functions of combustion, expansion and gas expulsion, on the other hand.
It remains true that current internal combustion engines, with energy yields below 50%, represent an enormous waste of resources, particularly in view of the ever decreasing supplies of these resources. Technical solutions to improve the energy balance of conventional engine technology are obviously limited and only possible with significant effort and expense.